From high-speed rail to electric cars to batteries to AI, it’s clear that China can operate with incredible speed at massive scale. Can the US still compete?
We sat down with Dan Wang, a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author of “Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future” to discuss.
Timecodes:
0:00 Introduction
1:36 Lawyers vs. Engineers: Cultural and Economic Differences
4:06 Urban and Rural Life: Comparing Infrastructure
7:20 Barriers to Progress: Regulation and Governance
11:00 Industrial Policy and Public-Private Partnerships
14:20 The Double-Edged Sword of Legal and Engineering Mindsets
16:50 Social Engineering and Policy in China
23:00 Competition, Intellectual Property, and Business Culture
27:10 Manufacturing, Scale, and Global Supply Chains
36:00 Lessons from Japan and Korea
41:30 Complacency, Quality, and the Future of Competition
48:45 Strategic Resources and Industrial Policy
54:00 Foreign Policy: Engineering Diplomacy vs. Alliances
59:00 Taiwan, Demographics, and the Future of US-China Relations
Resources:
Follow Dan on X: https://x.com/danwwang
Read Dan’s blog: https://danwang.co/
Buy Breakneck on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1324106034/
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